News Release Number: STScI-2013-44

NASA's Great Observatories Begin Deepest Ever Probe of the Universe

October 24, 2013: NASA's Great Observatories are teaming up to look deeper into the
universe than ever before. With a boost from natural "zoom lenses"
found in space, they should be able to uncover galaxies that are as
much as 100 times fainter than what the Hubble, Spitzer, and Chandra
space telescopes can typically see.
This ambitious collaborative program is called The Frontier Fields.
Astronomers will spend the next three years peering at six massive
clusters of galaxies. Researchers are interested not only as to what's
inside the clusters, but also what's behind them. The gravitational
fields of the clusters brighten and magnify distant background
galaxies that are so faint they would otherwise be unobservable.

Despite several deep field surveys, astronomers realized that a lot is
still to be learned about the distant universe. And, such knowledge
will help in planning the observing strategy for the next-generation
space observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope.
Join several members of the Frontier Fields collaboration during the
live Hubble Hangout event at 4:00pm (EDT) on Thursday, October 24 to
discuss more on what's to come from these observations, how the
clusters were chosen, and what we hope to learn from them. Visit:https://plus.google.com/u/0/events/cpl8pr6rjvls7en3c9ltrgelc80 .